31 March, 2010

Volksworld Show 2010 pics

Volksworld Show 2010
So, having missed the Volksworld show for the last couple of years (thanks not least to getting married on it's regular weekend slot) Thomas saved up his pennies and bought his Mummy an advance Saturday entrance arm band for a Mothering Sunday gift (which she was very pleased about indeed)...after baby swimming we piled into Poppy the Beetle and zoomed as quickly as we could to Sandown Park (near Esher), however, being a bit later than we would normally be (i.e. crack of dawn), by the time we got to the Esher Park *junction* on the motorway, the queue to even pull off to start the painful slog towards the venue was several miles long!
Volksworld Show 2010
Spotting a cheeky splittie jumping the queue and continuing down the motorway we decided to copy (and hopefully take advantage of some local knowledge), turned out, after loosing them several times, frantic bashing at the Tomtom only telling us to "Turn around when possible", it finally managed to work out another route, and we roared triumphantly up to the entrance to the car park only to be told it had been completely full since before 10am, even waving our "for sale" sign didn't get more than a shrug from the guy in HVJ blocking our way, as he handed us a map showing other car parks in the area...bah! Anyway, we quickly found a spot in the council car park (by the tiny farmers market), popped Thomas in his borrowed baby carrier (thanks Absolute Beginner!)
Volksworld Show 2010
- and made our way through the car park towards the show entrance -
Volksworld Show 2010
- enjoying even the sights of the car park (not often you can say that)... ;)
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
- including a bit of "work in progress" -
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
- someone that obviously got a bit lost ;) -
Volksworld Show 2010
- and someone who did an almost perfect disguise job on their Honda(?) mini-MPV...
Volksworld Show 2010
- we took a look around all the shiny bugs and buses in the main halls (including some interesting new raised vehicles) -
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
- marvelling at these (never seen before) Baby hammocks attached to a few of the campers -
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
- and some seriously lowered vehicles...!
Volksworld Show 2010
Poked around the shopping (although it felt like there were slightly less stalls this year) -
Volksworld Show 2010
- loved these flame boots, absolutely custom made for rainy years at Santa Pod -
Volksworld Show 2010
- and these "Plain Lazy" flasks "Don't wake me, I'm busy"...hehe... ;)
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
...and then we popped out onto the stands -
Volksworld Show 2010
- to watch the "how many people can fit in/on a VW Beetle" -
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
Volksworld Show 2010
- Bug Jam - quite literally...! I think they managed 94 this year...although I saw at least four people walk off without being counted (silly lot)... ;)
Volksworld Show 2010
- then I had to run out and put some more money on Poppy (as the council office was pay and display) while Flyingpops and Thomas went to catch up with old friend Sam (hello!) and have a little ride in his beach buggy (which he thought was everso good!) -
Volksworld Show 2010
- then we went for a quick pint, and watched someone making a real mess in the bar while we were waiting for the barrel to be changed... ;)

A lovely (if a little tiring with the baby carrier) day, we're already talking about next year... ;)

30 March, 2010

Cofferdam Dewatering - London Crossrail

Long overdue for an update on the Crossrail station at Canary Wharf - This is before (well, actually all of this is sort of during)-
Water works
- and how it looks now -
Canary Wharf Station - London Crossrail
Before-
Building Crossrail - Canary Wharf
- and how it looks now-
Canary Wharf Station - London Crossrail
- oh and I actually know the technical term for this stage of the work too (thanks to more very interesting signs popping up at the foot of One Canada Square) it's "Cofferdam Dewatering" (as you probably guessed from the title of this post)-
Sign explaining Cofferdam Dewatering
Actually, as you can see, pretty much all of the water is gone now, meaning pretty much all of the steps in the above poster must have been completed (including the rescue of the fish)...all that remains is the plug the flood (sorry, almost impossible to get a shot of it thanks to it's location behind some stairs)-
Water leaking in...
- that seems to be coming from the basement of the Bank of America building and they can make a start on the foundations...!

Loads more pictures here, if you like this sort of thing... ;)

29 March, 2010

Second Wedding Anniversary!!

Fink Wedding
It's our second Wedding Anniversary today, hasn't it gone fast!? I've got the day off work (I'll let you know later what we manage to get up to, but one thing I do want to do is sit together and go through (again) all the photos from the day - there were quite a lot, I think we filled up about 8 large photo albums in the end - or something silly like that)!
Hen Do
This time last year we were away on holiday in Canterbury (nice to read back through all that, we had a fantastic time)...even more so for the fact that this year we have Thomas around, so a mini-break in a B&B isn't quite so feasible... ;) The year before, of course, we were actually doing the ceremony and then enjoying our mini honeymoon to Bath and our actual honeymoon to Mexico...incredible to read through the Mexico trip again, that really was the journey of a lifetime - the perfect celebration... ;)
Rings
Anyway, please wish us a very happy day (whatever we end up doing)!

Love you sweetheart...! xxx

27 March, 2010

Little man...


Little man...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...has had a busy day :)

On our way to Volksworld...


On our way to Volksworld...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...Thomas loved his baby swimming, he went under water twice and splashed the rest of the time :)

Off to the Volksworld Show...

...shortly, just got to take Thomas to his baby swimming class first...pics etc. to follow... ;)

26 March, 2010

Nearly home...


Nearly home...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...what a long week...still, s'friday night now! :)

Huge Rainbow over the 2012 Olympic site!


Just shot this out the window with my phone...must be some sort of sign... ;)

Finks Links #89

Ah...let's just bask in that Friday feeling for a minute or two...it's the 12th week of the year, and in just a couple of days British Summer time begins, so don't forget to change your clocks on Saturday night...for those having a bit of trouble remembering, it's "Spring Forwards, Fall Back", so this time we loose an hour in bed (worse luck) but on the plus side it's much less time holding down the "Set" and "Hour" keys on your clock radio... ;)

Anyway, it being Friday, I have just a few links (things I found in the tubes) to share with you -

Let's start with the biggest space disaster in history (that you probably never heard of) and the raw video footage of the incident (and aftermath)...

20Gb of storage in 1980, vs 32Gb of storage in 2010...scary...

"Jedi" who refused to remove their hood at the job centre gets an apology...!

Recent Brunel Thames Tunnel Tour (in words and pictures)...

The timeline of fictional future events...

...and to go along with it, a similar video game timeline...

Flamewar, 1839...

...and finally, an almost unbelievable fire alarm fail and an amusing "Study Computer" fail...

Jolly good weekend everyone, catch you next week, hopefully with some nice pictures from the Volksworld show!

25 March, 2010

A pox upon EA Games!

Those *idiots*...here we have a lovely environment, where it's easy, practically free and extremely quick to get hold of demo versions of new games (thus practically removing any incentive for casual piracy and boosting sales for genuinely great titles) and EA-bloody-Games suddenly decides that it can make a fast buck by charging for *demo* content...*sigh*...

No-one charges for demo content - if you are *paying* then it isn't a blooming demo, it's a commercial product! The only problem is, there are shower of fools out there prepared to splash out their hard-earned for something *useless* (who obviously do exist - because otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy stupid DLC like "Horse Armour") are either going to ruin it for everyone else by souring the pudding or push everyone back into the arms of either the aforementioned pirates, or the second-hand market, neither of which are going to help Tiny Tim, the cheerful but crippled programmers son, get his Christmas goose...

The other thing is, demo content is often released with a caveat something along the lines of "this is a demo and doesn't represent the finished product (blah blah)", so what is the story going to be here? Will we *pay* to become beta testers now? Or will EA wait until the game has gone Gold, sell a crippled version of it until people have stopped paying and then, when the game has been perfected, *finally* release the full version? What a mess... >8(

Oh and don't even get me started on Bioshock II including the first bit of DLC on the *game disk*, Bioware...what were you thinking? *Tut*...

Update - don't look now...EA are considering legal action against "South Park"...! It's just win after win after win for those guys...

Mission successful

mission successful
Made it... :)

DLR delays


Great, just had to get off the DLR at Crossharbour, some sort of signalling fault, trying to walk to work, at least I have a big target to aim at! :)